Nightway

by Janet Dailey

  He covered Lanna’s mouth with his hand to awaken her and smother any involuntary sound she might make. She stiffened, then relaxed under the silencing pressure of his hand. The snorting of a horse was followed by the sound of pebbles rolling under a boot. Hawk glanced at their own horses, but they didn’t appear interested in the sounds.

  There was a splash of water, which told Hawk they were at the spring. “Ah, that’s the sweetest water I’ve ever tasted.” Hawk recognized Bill Short’s voice.

  “Fill the canteens before the horses muddy it up,” Rawlins ordered.

  “How do you suppose he managed to vanish without a trace?” Short questioned on a confused note. “I figured he would show up before now.”

  “Which shows how cunning he is. That’s what he wants us to think so we’ll waste time waiting around here while he lights out for other parts. That’s why he led us up to within a mile of this place.”

  “Then where is he?”

  “Most of these Navahos have themselves a summer hogan up in the hills. I’d guess that’s where Hawk has taken the girl,” Rawlins said. “He’s probably up there now, laughing. He won’t be laughing when we find him.”

  “Do you know where to look?” Short sounded skeptical.

  “I remember J. B. mentioning a couple of places in the hills where there was water. We’ll find it, if we don’t cut his trail before then,” Rawlins was confident. “Let’s mount up.”

  There was the squeaking groan of saddle leather and horses splashing through water before the ground vibrated with the thunder of cantering hooves. Hawk waited until the sound had receded, then shifted Lanna out of his arms to rise stiffly and watch the departing riders.

  “Have they gone for good?” Lanna asked hopefully when he turned back to her.

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you water the horses and give them the rest of the grass?” he suggested and swung the blanket off his shoulders.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Maybe I’m just naturally suspicious”—Hawk shrugged—“but I want to make sure they are really leaving and that conversation we overheard wasn’t part of a setup. I won’t be long,” he promised, then started up the narrow trail to the canyon rim.

  Within half an hour, Hawk returned. “They’re gone,” he stated, answering the silent question in her look. “They rode into the hills west of us. This is one time when Rawlins outsmarted himself. We should be safe for a couple of days.” Lanna heard the tiredness in his voice as he almost sighed the last words. The lines deepened around his eyes in a faint smile. “How about some coffee and some hot food?”

  While she cut slices of bacon from the slab he’d brought, Hawk started the small fire. They shared a cup of coffee while the bacon sizzled in the small skillet. Lanna used the last of the water to stir up the dehydrated eggs, then fried them in the bacon grease. It was the most delicious meal she’d eaten in ages.

  “There are a couple of swallows of coffee left.” Hawk passed her the tin mug.

  “We don’t have any more water,” she told him before taking a drink and savoring the rich coffee flavor. It revitalized her, but her muscles were still stiff from the cramped sleep she had had.

  “I’ll get some.” He moved to string the canteens over his shoulder. “The horses need some more grass, anyway.”

  “Wait.” Lanna quickly drained the last of the coffee, not wasting a drop. “I’ll come with you.”

  “What? And break your neck?” Hawk joked.

  Lanna thought of the makeshift ladder he’d described, with footholds carved into the stone, and she shrugged. “I did a little climbing when I lived in Colorado. Nothing particularly challenging or dangerous, but if you can make it, so can I.” Then added the final, and most telling argument: “I’m tired of being cooped up inside this cave, anyway. I’m getting claustrophobic.” Which was a slight exaggeration, but she didn’t want to be left behind.

  Hawk hesitated a second, then agreed. “Okay, you can come. I’ll go down first.”

  “So you can catch me when I fall,” Lanna joked.

  “That’s right.” Hawk smiled and reached down to toss her his quilt. “Throw that down to me so I can bundle the grass in it and have something to carry it in coming back up.”

  She followed him onto the ledge outside the mouth of the cave and watched as he swung over the edge, searching with his feet for the first foothold. He disappeared slowly from her view. Lanna held her breath until she saw him on the ground. She threw him the folded blanket.

  “It’s your turn,” Hawk called, cupping his hands to his mouth and issuing the challenge. “You can change your mind if you want.”

  “Not a chance.” Lanna mimicked his movements, lying belly down over the edge and swinging her feet over.

  She wasn’t as confident as she had implied, but once she had started, there seemed to be only one way to go—and that was down. She preferred using the footholds to reach at her destination rather than falling. Her knees were shaking when she got to the bottom and Hawk’s hands closed around her waist to lift her the last couple of feet. Lanna could have accused him of exaggeration. The erosion of time had turned many of the footholds and handholds into finger and toe holds, but she was too glad to be safely on the ground to worry about them now.

  “Is your heart still beating?” Hawk smiled with his eyes.

  “A hundred times a minute,” Lanna admitted.

  “You can fill the canteens from the spring while I cut some grass for the horses.” Unslinging the canteens from his shoulder, he handed them to her.

  “Aren’t you worried about leaving tracks for them to find if they come back?” she asked.

  “They’ve ridden and walked all over this canyon. They’ll never be able to tell our tracks from theirs,” he assured her.

  Removing his hunting knife from its sheath, he carried it and the blanket over to the tall, yellowed grass beneath the trees. Lanna walked the few feet to the spring with the empty canteens. At the point where it seeped from underground, the water flowed gaily over a washboard of pebbles and emerged into a small pool about the same width and depth of a washtub. Over many years, the water had eaten a narrow channel into the solid rock at the opposite end of the pool, where it escaped in a silver ribbon. Lanna lost sight of the tiny stream as it entered a tunnel of lush grass.

  She held the canteens under the pool’s surface and listened to them gurgle as the water rushed in. The water was almost icy-cold. She scooped a swallow up in her hand and sipped its sweet wetness, then splashed some on her face. Her skin tingled, revived by the chill of the water.

  When the canteens were full, Lanna set them by the canyon wall and wandered over to where Hawk was working. The hogan was plainly visible beyond the stand of cottonwoods. Her curiosity was aroused when she noticed a much smaller building half-hidden among the trees.

  “Hawk, what is that?” She pointed to the small building that was almost a miniature of the hogan. “An outhouse?”

  He looked and turned back to continue cutting swaths of grass, but not before Lanna saw the grin that split his face. “No, that’s a sweathouse.”

  “What’s a sweathouse?” It didn’t upset Lanna that her question amused him.

  “Just what the word implies—a house where you sweat.” Hawk paused in his labor. “I suppose you could call it the Navaho version of a sauna.”

  “That sounds heavenly,” she murmured wistfully. “I don’t suppose it’s been used in a long time.”

  “As a matter of fact, it has. I use it whenever I’m here for any length of time.” He began slicing at the grass with the knife blade, then tossing the clumps on the nearby blanket.

  Lanna gazed at the building. “I don’t suppose that maybe …” She turned back to Hawk and found him watching her with a dancing glint in his blue eyes.

  “A sweathouse is an exclusively male institution,” he stated.

  “No women allowed?” she questioned with faint challenge.

  Hawk looked to
the west. Lanna knew his thoughts were on Rawlins and where he might be. Just for a minute, she had allowed herself to forget about their pursuers. She reluctantly shelved the idea of using the sweathouse, realizing it might be too risky.

  “You cut some grass for a while.” He stabbed the point of the knife blade into the ground. “I’ll start a fire and get the stones hot.”

  “If you don’t think we should—” Lanna began in a reasonable tone.

  “We’ll never have a better time,” Hawk interrupted. “Tomorrow they might swing back here to see if they were right all along.”

  “You talked me into it.” A pair of dimples dented Lanna’s cheeks when she smiled.

  “I thought I could,” he murmured dryly.

  Hawk was gone for what seemed a long time. When he returned, Lanna had added enough grass to the mound he had accumulated to fill the blanket. Hawk was carrying a hollowed-out gourd, shaped like a pitcher. He set it aside to tie the four corners of the blanket.

  “I’ll take this to the cave.” Slipping the knot of two corners over his head, Hawk slid one arm free so the bundle was positioned on his back. “Why don’t you fill that pitcher with water while I’m gone?”

  “Okay.”

  But Lanna watched him make the climb, worried that he might not make it safely with that awkward bundle on his back. When he hooked a knee over the ledge and swung onto it, she released a sigh of relief and walked to the spring.

  Hawk hadn’t come down by the time she had filled the pitcher with water, so she walked to the sweathouse. A dusty blanket acted as a door to the dirtcovered building. Lanna lifted it aside and immediately felt the rush of heat. She stepped inside, letting the blanket fall into place behind her. The smallness of the building made it quick to heat, with the earthen walls holding it in. Smooth stones were piled in the center. Lanna dipped her fingers in the pitcher of water and sprinkled drops on the stones. The droplets sizzled and were quickly gone.

  Leaving the gourd inside, Lanna went back out. She looked toward the cave, but there was no sign of Hawk. The temptation to use the sweathouse-sauna was simply too great. Without waiting for him, Lanna undressed, neatly folded her blouse and jeans with her underclothes, and laid them near the door.

  Before the brisk autumn air could chill her skin, she hurried into the lodge. This time she was liberal in the amount of water she splashed on the hot stones, sending a rush of steam into the air. Sitting down, she stretched out her legs on the hard ground and leaned back on her hands. Within minutes, she felt the moist heat surging through her body, soothing tired muscles and easing the tension of the last twenty-four hours. Tilting her head back, Lanna closed her eyes to enjoy the sensation.

  A cool draft of air fanned her skin. She opened her eyes to see Hawk towering above her, dressed in a breechcloth that hid so little. His flesh was a smooth, pale copper, from the long length of his legs to the flat muscles of his torso. There was a darkness to his blue eyes as they swept over her. Lanna felt the thudding of her heart grow louder. The breechcloth revealed the way the corded muscles of his thighs attached themselves to his hipbone and exposed the hard curved line of his buttocks. There was a tightness in her throat, an exhilarating tension racing through her nerve ends.

  “The stones were hot,” she murmured. “I didn’t think you’d mind if I came in before you were back.”

  “I don’t.” Hawk reached to splash more water on the stones, and steam billowed in a thin white fog.

  Fascinated by the sheen that his perspiration was bringing to his skin, Lanna missed the movement of his hand that untied the cloth covering his loins. But when he unwrapped it and tossed it carelessly to the floor, it suddenly hurt to breathe as she was suffocated by a heat that came both from without and within.

  With an animal grace, Hawk lowered himself to the floor beside her, his gaze locked with hers. Their primitive surroundings, their nudity, and the volcanic heat rising from the core all pressed Lanna backward. Hawk followed her. He tangled a handful of hair in his fingers, holding her head still while he studied her flushed face. Lanna’s breath left her in a sigh as his mouth began a slow descent to her lips.

  She lifted her hands to his sweat-slick skin, letting them glide over the rippling muscles of his back and ribs. Their mouths explored each other in devouring sensuality, tongues investigating and mating. Yet there was a slowness, a languor, a stoking of the flames to make them burn hot and long.

  His hand moved over her glistening body, her flesh burning under his touch. His caressing fingers seemed to enjoy discovering again every sensitive inch of her body, tracing the tantalizing hollow of her throat and circling her breasts. The earthy smell of him filled her senses, blocking out everything but the long-denied aching within her.

  Dragging his mouth from her lips, he didn’t let it leave her skin as it moved over her cheek to the pulse beating wildly in her throat. His lips parted, letting her feel the wetness of his mouth against her skin.

  “I’ve waited so long for this.” There was a ragged edge to his voice, a roughness to his breathing. It echoed much of what Lanna was feeling.

  When his lips brushed the curve of a breast, she slid her fingers into his hair. Sweat had separated the jet-blackness of his hair into wet tendrils, making it cling like damp silk to her hands.

  Unable to bear the way his mouth was teasing her breast, Lanna arched toward him, forcing his head down. His mouth opened to surround the hard center and the dusty rose circle around it, devouring its ripeness. A moan of wild longing quivered from her throat as the intimate stimulation of his mouth tightened the pit of her stomach, making it throb with a fiery need. His hand glided down to massage away the burning ache. Her hips moved under his soothing manipulation that eased the hurt but aroused her to a pitch of fevered desire. Her raking hands and quivering body pleaded with him to fulfill the promise of satisfaction with which his hands and mouth were torturing her.

  His male lips came back to her mouth, piercing its dark recesses with his hard tongue. His body shifted to cover hers, the welding film of perspiration uniting their flesh. The hot humidity of the air stifled her lungs. Under the crushing weight of his body, Lanna couldn’t breathe, pinned between the rock-hard floor and the equally unyielding solidness of him.

  She struggled free of his mouth to murmur in choked regret: “Hawk … you’re too heavy for me. I can’t breathe!”

  In one fluid, continuous motion, he rolled onto his back, pulling her with him so that she was in the dominant position. Partially lifting her from his torso with his hands, he slid his disturbing gaze over the white globes of her naked breasts.

  “I thought you would prefer the proper missionary position,” Hawk murmured in faint mockery.

  Then his hands were on her—arousing, building, and caressing. The heat became a golden inferno as their bodies moved together in a wild rhythm. Lanna was enveloped in the flaming warmth that went beyond passion. At some point, they surpassed the mere physical union of the flesh to experience the dazzling fusion of the spirit.

  The enchantment was slow to leave as Lanna laid within the circle of Hawk’s powerful arms. She didn’t speak, finding words an inadequate means of expressing her feelings. Closing her eyes, she savored the violent ecstasy that lingered in her nerve ends. Hawk stirred beneath her, his hand gliding over her perspiring skin. She murmured an incoherent protest.

  “This steam will sap the rest of our strength,” he warned huskily and forced her to sit up.

  When he rolled to his feet, Lanna remained sitting with her legs curled to the side. Her hazel eyes were luminous and soft as she gazed up at him, openly acknowledging that she belonged to him. The possessive glitter of his gaze confirmed his ownership. He reached down to help her up, then changed his mind when she was almost standing and swung her off her feet and into his arms. She linked her hands around his neck, pressing her mouth to his throat and scattering loving kisses over his warm, wet skin. The salty taste of him was headier than any after-dinner li
queur; she was drunk with the sensation of him.

  He carried her to the door, pushing aside the blanket with a shoulder. After being in the dim interior of the sweathouse, the sunshine was brilliant against her eyes. She shut them and hugged nearer to the warmth of his body as her bare skin felt the chill of cooler air. Hawk didn’t set her down, but continued walking with her in his arms.

  “Where are we going?” Lanna asked, not really caring as she let her thumb trace the jutting line of his collarbone.

  “The Swedes believe in a dip in a fjord after a sauna, don’t they?” he replied.

  It was a second before the implication of his words registered. It lifted her head from his shoulder and opened her eyes wide. Turning her head, she saw he was carrying her to the spring. Her gaze jerked back to his face and to the faintly devilish glint in his eyes.

  “Hawk, you wouldn’t? You aren’t?” But she already knew that he would, and he was. “No! Put me down!” Lanna struggled in laughing panic. “Please, Hawk, don’t!”

  “I’ll put you down in a minute,” he chuckled.

  “No! Don’t drop me into that!” she protested, neither frightened nor angry, just anxious to avoid that part of the ritual.

  “Okay.” He stopped beside the spring. “I won’t drop you into it,” he promised.

  Relief sighed through her and she relaxed in his arms, believing him. Suddenly, the arm that had been supporting the back of her legs was removed. Her feet swung down, straight into the cold spring water. Lanna shrieked from the shock of the cold water on her hot and sweaty legs.

  “Is it cold?” Hawk laughed and splashed water on her thighs.

  “You promised!” she accused, trying to keep her balance on the slippery bottom long enough to step out.

  “I promised not to drop you,” he reminded her, then began splashing more water on her, aiming it higher.